FACULTY AND GUEST ARTIST RECITAL KATHLEEN WINKLER, Violin /VO-JAN VANDERWERFF, Viola BRINTON AVERIL SMITH, Cello EVELYN CHEN, Piano (guest) Monday, February 9, 2009 8:00 p.m. Lillian H Duncan Recital Hall the RICE UNIVERSITY ~ ofmusic
PROGRAM Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47 Sostenuto assai - Allegro ma non troppo Scherzo. Molto vivace Andante cantabile Finale. Vivace Robert Schumann (1810-1856) ' INTERMISSION Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 Allegro con brio Scherzo ( Allegro molto) Adagio Allegro Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) The reverberative acoustics of Duncan Recital Hall magnify the slightest sound made by the audience. Your care and courtesy will be appreciated. \ The taking of photographs and use of recording equipment are prohibited.
BIOGRAPHIES The artistry of KATHLEEN WINKLER has earned her the plaudits of critics and audiences alike worldwide since her solo debut at the age of seventeen with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been heard with such orchestras as the Detroit Symphony (with which she has toured on many occasions), the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Danish Radio Orchestra, the Odense Byorkester, the Polish Slaska Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony, to name a few. She has toured throughout the United States and Canada as well as having performed in Sweden, Poland, Germany, Spain, and the Canary Islands. The recipient of numerous awards, Ms. Winkler took first prize in the First International Carl Nielsen Violin Competition which led to her sponsored debuts in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C., and numerous radio broadcast performances on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the International Voice of America. Through a national search, Kathleen Winkler was selected by the United States Information Agency to represent the US. as an Artistic Ambassador on concert tours throughout the world. Her initial tour took her to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and New Zealand. Another extended tour saw Ms. Winkler's performances representing our country in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria, and Kenya. A third tour took Ms. Winkler throughout Australia and South America. The Philadelphia-born artist attended Indiana University where she received her Bachelor of Music degree, magna cum laude, as well as the coveted Performer's Certificate. She also attended the University of Michigan, where she received her Master of Music degree, summa cum laude. Formerly on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory, she is currently Professor of Violin at The Shepherd School of Music and a recipient of Rice University's Julia Miles Chance Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Additionally, she is a visiting professor at the Middle School of the Beijing Central Conservatory in China. During the summer she is on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, where she holds the Leni Fe Bland Chair in Violin, and in China on the artist faculty of the Beijing International Music Festival and Academy in Beijing and Shanghai. Ms. Winkler is married to Timothy Pitts, Principal Bassist of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and is mother to eleven-year-old Nina and eight-yearold Kiri. /VO-JAN VAN DER WERFF has attained accolades as a chamber player, recitalist, guest artist, and teacher throughout Europe and North America. As a member of the Medici String Quartet for twenty-four years, Mr. van der Werff performed in over I, 700 concerts in major festivals and venues worldwide, broadcasting regularly on radio and television. The Medici Quartet made more than forty recordings for EM/, Nimbus, Hyperion, and Koch, and won many awards for works ranging from Haydn, Britten, Jan- acek, Schubert, and the Beethoven cycle to more eclectic works of Saint Saens, Wajahat Khan, and Nigel Osborne. The quartet had collaborations f
with many artists across the musical, literary, and theatrical spectrum including the Royal Shakespeare Company, George Martin, Alan Bennett, John Williams, John Thaw, and Jack Brymer. Mr. van der Werff has performed as recitalist in New York, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Sri Lanka, as well as numerous venues throughout the United Kingdom. His recordings for ASV and Koch include the sonata by Max Reger and the complete works for viola and piano or harp by Arnold Bax. Mr. van der Werff is frequently invited to perform with other quartets and chamber ensembles throughout the United Kingdom and Europe. Before joining the Medici Quartet, Mr. van der Werff worked with many conductors, including Sir George So/ti, Bernard Haitink, and Klaus Tennstedt, and has since been invited to appear as guest principal viola and soloist with many of the United Kingdom's leading orchestras. Mr. van der Werff was recently appointed Professor of Viola at The Shepherd School of Music. He was previously Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the Royal College of Music in London. He developed a private viola program near London and taught at many international summer schools. He has also been a frequent adjudicator for competition juries. His most recent project, inspired by his viola mentors Margaret Major, Peter Shidlof, and Bruno Giuranna, is a book entitled "Notebook for Viola Players" which is a series of exercises and explanations on and about viola technique. Mr. van der Werff plays on a viola by Giovanni Grancino, of Milan, c.1690. Hailed by New York Newsday for "... extraordinary musicianship... forceful, sophisticated and entirely in the spirit of the music," American cellist BRINTON AVERIL SMITH has performed as soloist, chamber musician, and in recital throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada, and New Zealand. Mr. Smith's engagements include performances at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, Carnegie Recital Hall, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the BanffCentrefor the Arts, and appearances with orchestras in Detroit, Houston, San Diego, New Jersey, Las Vegas, San Jose, Tucson, Phoenix, Wellington, and Auckland. Mr. Smith recorded the Miklos R6zsa Cello Concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra for a Koch International Classics release that received widespread international critical acclaim. The annual Gramophone awards issue praised Smith as a "hugely eloquent, impassioned soloist," and continued, "The sheer bravura of Smith's reading is infectious." His recent recording of Faure's Piano Trio and Apres un Rive with Gil Shaham for Vanguard Classics was chosen as Gramophone magazine's Disc of the Month and was recently selected as one of BBC Music magazine's best albums of the year. Mr. Smith will also be featured on an upcoming Naxos release of the chamber music of composer Steven Gerber with violinists Kurt Nikkanen and Cho-Liang Lin. Mr. Smith has appeared regularly with the Houston Symphony since joining the orchestra as principal cellist in 2005. Previously he was a member of the New York Philharmonic, and was the first musician appointed by music director Lorin Maazel. He was also previously the principal cellist of the San Diego and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras. Mr. Smith is currently a
member of the faculty at The Shepherd School of Music and has also served as a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. An active chamber musician, Smith has collaborated with members of the Beaux Arts Trio and the Guarneri, Emerson, Juilliard, Cleveland, and Berg Quartets, and in performances with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic Chamber Series, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Killington Music Festival, El Paso Pro Musica, the Mainly Mozart Festival, the Bear Valley Music Festival, the Texas Music Festival, the Las Vegas Music Festival, the Ventura Music Festival, and, with violinist Gil Shaham, at the Aspen Music Festival winter recital series and the Linton series in Cincinnati. Mr. Smith was a prize winner of the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition and several consecutive Juilliard and Aspen Music Festival concerto competitions. While at Juilliard, he received the Melini Award for excellence in performance and was invited to perform at the American Cello Congress. His performances have been broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning and on radio throughout the United States on NPR 's Performance Today and in New Zealand, South Africa, and Germany. The son of a mathematician and a pianist, Brinton Averil Smith began his musical studies at age five. At age ten he was admitted to Arizona State University, where he took courses in mathematics and German and, by age seventeen, completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics. While a scholarship student of Eleonore Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California, he was also a teaching assistant in the mathematics department, and completed work for an Master of Arts degree in mathematics at age nineteen. He subsequently relocated to New York to study with cellist Zara Nelsova at The Juilliard School, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, writing on the playing of Emanuel Feuermann. Mr. Smith lives in Houston with his wife, the pianist Evelyn Chen, and their daughter Calista. f The New York Times hailed EVELYN CHEN as "a pianist to watch," praising her "brilliant technique, warm, clear tone, and exacting musical intelligence." Ms. Chen's recent engagements have included performances on five continents at venues including Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Wolf Trap, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the National Concert Hall in Taipei, the Central Conservatory Concert Hall in Beijing, the Cultural Center of Hong Kong, and the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. A Steinway Artist, Ms. Chen has performed with numerous orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra (upon Mstislav Rostropovich's recommendation), the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, the New Zealand Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, and the San Diego Symphony, and has collaborated with renowned conductors including Riccardo Muti, Leonard Slatkin, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Zdenek Macal, Joseph Silverstein, Henry Mazer, Alberto Bo/et, Enrique Batiz, and JoAnn Falletta.
Ms. Chen's recent recordings have received international critical acclaim. Her recording of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London on BMG was among the top ten best-selling classical recordings in England. Ms. Chen's performance was praised by Fanfare magazine as "eminently musical, particularly sensitive to Rachmaninoff's intimacies." Fanfare further commended Ms. Chen's recording of Miklos R6zsa's Piano Concerto with James Sedares and the New Zealand Symphony on Koch International, stating "it would be hard to imagine a performance more in tune with the music's dynamism than the one turned in by Evelyn Chen, who wonderfully communicates a kind of virtuoso thrill while also capturing every one of the work's Protean changes of mood." Gramophone magazine also marveled that "Evelyn Chen is a dazzlingly secure, marvelously sympathetic exponent that R6zsafans will rightly welcome with open arms." Ms. Chen has been featured on the CBS Evening News, and her performances have been broadcast by National Public Radio affiliates WGBH (Boston), WQXR (New York), WNYC (New York), WNCN (New York), WFMT (Chicago), and WGTS (Washington, D.C.), as well as throughout Taiwan and Great Britain (Classic FM). She has collaborated in chamber music with violinist Cho-Liang Lin, cellist Leslie Parnas, and pianist Charles Wadsworth, as well as with members of the New York Philharmonic. While touring Asia as soloist with the Harvard Orchestra, Ms. Chen performed before prominent dignitaries including the Princess of Thailand and the Prime Minister of Malaysia. A winner of several international competitions, Ms. Chen is the recipient of the 1995 Petschek Award, which awarded her a fully sponsored New York debut recital at Alice Tully Hall. She is also the First Prize Winner of the 1993 Mieczyslaw Munz International Competition as well as the Grand Prize Winner of the 1984 Piano Guild International Recording Competition. As the youngest competitor at the age of fourteen, Ms. Chen captured First Prize in the 1981 Bach International Competition in Washington, D.C. Ms. Chen received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School, a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in composition magna cum laude from Harvard University. Her teachers include pianists Russell Sherman, Constance Keene, Earle Voorhies, and Jerome Lowenthal, and composers Leon Kirchner and David Lewin. She is currently an Associate Professor of Piano at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. 'RICE